Oblivion Episode 6 - JJ Abrams Was Right
by Gabriel Seraph
Summary: This story is inspired by Organization XIII. Great liberties have been taken with names, places, etc. in order to create as original a story as possible. Enzo Lessico creates a masterful illusion, and traps the townhouse in a bizarre pocket world. Tim and his brothers want to get out of the house, but this proves tough as the door is now 16 feet out of reach. AU, with some OC's.
1. Chapter 1

AN: As always, this story is not to be read unless you have read the previous entries in the _Oblivion_ series (that is, unless you enjoy spoilers of previous installments.) If you have read from "The New Kid" to "Shake, Rattle, and Roll Over the Edge," then feel free to enjoy my latest story without spoiling anything!

Episode 6 - "JJ Abrams Was Right"

Chapter 1

Wednesday night, 11:58pm. Enzo Lessico entered his bedroom, filed slowly past his sleeping wife, and descended the stairs to the second floor. He entered the spare bedroom, picked up the Latin-English dictionary he'd spent the last several days studying over and over so he would know how to perform as many incantations as possible. He flipped it open to a page almost at random, but he had no need to read directly from the book - he had memorized the three phrases he would need to utter, one after the other, from 11:59pm to 12:01am.

Enzo's watch beeped as 11:59 came along. He spoke the first incantation quickly but carefully, so as to get the pronunciation correct. "_Haec domus intrare parallela dimensionis._" He gazed out the window, and wondered what it would be like for someone else to look outside and see the street outside vanish entirely from view like a projector screen going dark. _This is the one thing I wish I could do_, he thought, _see my own illusions as they happen._

The stroke of midnight arrived with another beep from Enzo's watch, and he spoke the second incantation: "_Aetheres erit coloratum sicut sanguis._" Again, to Enzo's eye, it appeared as if nothing had changed.

12:01am and the third incantation: "_Quid deorsum cadit mos iam cadere sursum._" Enzo closed the book and placed it back on its shelf. _I don't think this is actual Latin, but then again it'll most likely work anyway,_ thought Enzo. _It's only meant to focus the illusion anyway._

He removed a pen and paper, wrote a note to Lara explaining what was happening, left it on her nightstand, and descended to the garage. He then started the car and left the house, to drive down to NemoConTech headquarters in Santa Marina. _Oh, how I wish I could see the looks on everyone's faces,_ he thought. _Or maybe I can, if I ask Ansem real nicely._

* * *

-October 25-

Thursday morning, 7:30am. By now, school should have been starting, but due to yesterday's earthquake the building was closed for a week, perhaps longer if the repairs couldn't be finished soon enough. So, the Nemo boys were taking advantage of the opportunity to sleep in.

Tim, however, had to wonder if he was even awake yet, because although he felt awake, there was something very wrong with the curtain. It should have been glowing white with the rising sun streaming through, but instead it seemed to be a disturbing ruby red. Tim noted for a second that it was almost the exact shade of red as Axel's ridiculous hair dye.

_Okay, I'm going outside to see what's happening,_ Tim thought. But as soon as he disentangled himself from his bedsheets, he fell down, flat on his stomach, onto the ceiling. _Ouch!_

The noise woke up Axel, who also emerged from his bed and for his trouble found himself splayed across the ceiling in his underwear. "Whoa, dude!" he cried. "Did you develop some new power in your sleep or something?"

"No," said Tim. "I'm guessing you didn't, either?"

"No!" yelled Axel. "I don't know how to turn gravity upside down!"

"It can't be gravity," Tim said. "Look at our beds, our furniture. It's all still staying on the floor like nothing's wrong."

"Oh, really?" griped Axel. "What are you trying to say? Is this one of those pocket dimension things they have on _Fringe?_"

"I don't know," said Tim, crossing to the window and pulling the curtain open.

The sight that met his eyes was a very bizarre one indeed. The sky was, in fact, a lurid bright red, bathing everything in a weird hellfire glow. But that wasn't the most wrong thing about the view. The street was no longer there - at least, not as the street it used to be. What had yesterday been a concrete boulevard had become a rough stone path on rocky ground, and on the other side of this path was a number of fountainous springs that glowed vividly blue even in the red daylight. Not a single car was in sight, nor any sign that a 2000-student high school existed just one hundred feet away.

"Ojo de Cielo Springs," said Tim, realizing what he was looking at. "Are we in the past or something?"

Axel snorted. "Who cares? Let's just get out of here and try to figure out what the hell just happened to us!"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Thursday morning, 8:00am. Ashley sauntered up to the Nemos' house, buzzed the doorbell, and waited for someone to open the gate. And waited. And waited. And waited.

After a minute of waiting, she saw Vexen Nemo emerge from the door, already dressed for work and carrying a leather satchel full of thick files (which were in turn full of incomprehensible computerized jargon). She looked at Ashley and blinked in mild surprise. "Who are you?" she asked.

Ashley twitched slightly before saying, "Ashley Aspen. I'm one of Tim's friends, we were gonna go out shopping today now that school's been canceled, and..."

Vexen thought for a second before answering, "Oh yes, Tim told me about you." This was actually a complete and utter lie; Vexen only knew about Ashley from seeing her appear on many of Ansem's hidden security cameras. "So where do you intend to go shopping?"

"Well," said Ashley, "I was going to get him to buy some different clothes. He desperately needs a makeover and now we got the chance to give him one!"

Vexen shrugged. "Okay. Tim's upstairs, I think he's getting dressed. I'll just let you in and you can wait in the living room for him. Is that okay?"

Ashley nodded, and stood aside so Vexen could open the gate for her. As she climbed the steps, Ashley's eye was caught by the site of an ornately gold-veined silver bracelet on Vexen's wrist. She pointed it out and said, "That's some, uh, bling, Mrs. Nemo."

"Oh, you like it?" Vexen smiled. "It's an old family heirloom. My grandmother gave it to me. Hopefully before too long I'll have a granddaughter of my own to give it to." She gave Ashley a meaningful glance, one that she recognized all too well as meaning, "_I hope you can help me out with that._" But Ashley pretended not to pick up on Vexen's signals, instead giving a naive little girl's giggle as she walked through the main door and took a seat in the living room.

She waited. And waited. Surprisingly, the house sounded completely empty aside from her. Her phone buzzed in her pocket as Tara sent her a text message: "R u at Tim's place yet? have u shown him the video?"

"No."

"Oh, he'll love it," Tara texted back. Ashley decided to pass the time by re-watching the video Tara had sent her. It was a hilarious little one, and she was sure that Tara was right - Tim would like it, hopefully.

But, after the video ended, there was still no sign of Tim, or anyone else, inside the house. She turned toward the stairs and called, "Tim? Timmy? Where are you?"

* * *

Tim and Axel continued to walk around on the ceiling in their parallel-dimensionized house, searching for something that could help them reach the front door, now extremely high up and far out of reach. Unfortunately, there was almost nothing available in any reachable closet to build a 16-foot stack to reach the door.

Rocky (who had also found himself falling up to the ceiling when he'd woken up in the morning) tapped Axel's shoulder and asked him to lift him up so he could use his keyblade to open the door. It was a difficult task, but he was eventually able to reach the ceiling with the long business end of the big metal tool. The door opened, as expected, and simply began banging uselessly against the wall as it swayed in the slight wind from the red-sky-land outside.

As Tim pushed a big wooden box across the ceiling (he had just removed it from Rocky's closet, and it was the only sizable thing he had found which could potentially be used to build a makeshift ladder to reach the door), he stopped short. Someone had just called his name. He looked up at Axel and Rocky and asked, "Okay, who just called me?"

"What?" asked Axel. "I didn't say anything."

"Wasn't me either," said Rocky.

"Well, it had to be one of you guys, 'cause there's nobody else in here, and-" Tim stopped short, because he had just heard his name again. It seemed to be a familiar female voice, and it was almost definitely coming from a spot about halfway between the ceiling and the sofa on the floor above.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Tim looked around at the spot smack in the middle of the room and listened hard, but couldn't hear anything emanating from it anymore. After a couple seconds of this, Axel remarked, "Wasn't that your little girlfriend, Timmy? Maybe you should make cute little bedroom eyes at the ceiling or something, then she'll call your name again."

Shaking his head in disgust, Tim nevertheless complied with Axel's suggestion and pouted at the spot, closing his eyes almost as much as he possibly could without cutting out his eyesight completely. Sure enough, as soon as he did this, Ashley's voice could be heard once again, saying, "Yoo-hoo! Timmy! Are ya up there or what?"

"It works!" Tim said, feigning delight as he clapped his hands.

Rocky then started walking around, his face directed straight at the ceiling. Suddenly he spotted something on the spot. "Hey guys, come over here!" he said, gesturing wildly towards himself. Tim and Axel crossed over to where Rocky was standing, then looked up towards the ceiling.

"What the hell is this?" Axel asked. He pointed up at the spot, which now appeared to be a reflection of the tiled floor in the foyer, but in its regular white color, rather than the wine-colored tint the tiles displayed in the red sunlight of this parallel dimension.

"It's like a mirror," said Tim. "But it's not reflecting us. Like we're invisible."

"Or like we're vampires," said Rocky.

"That kinda reminds me of something," said Tim. "Like, on _Angel_, every time they went into some other dimension like Pylea, and Angel wouldn't catch fire in the sun because the physics worked differently-"

"Shut up already!" yelled Axel. "For the love of God, Tim, do you really think this is a good time to make a Buffy reference?"

Ignoring his twin, Tim gestured to Rocky and said, "Give me the box, quick." Rocky shifted the box until it was directly underneath the spot, and Tim stepped onto it and jumped. "Dammit, I can't reach it," he said, after trying ten times and getting only about two feet of air.

Axel sighed and held out his hands to try and give Tim a boost. "Wow, you are about as heavy as Rocky," he commented as Tim tried once again, this time coming a little closer to the spot, but not quite reaching it. "Which isn't really a good thing, now that I think about it." Axel then bounced Tim up again, and this time he was able to grab onto the edge of the spot, as if it were a solid ledge. Tim lifted his head through and yelled, "Whoa!" as he realized that while the rest of his body was right side up, his head had just crossed back into another dimension and was now upside down. _Very disorienting_.

Tim looked around the other side of the hole and realized that on the other side of the spot was the living room, in the real world - the sky was blue, the sunlight was white, and traffic was bustling down Carver Boulevard towards the center of town, and Ashley was sitting on the couch - "Ashley?" Tim blurted out, before he could stop himself.

Ashley looked up and said, "Is that you, Tim? Where've you been all this - HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" she cursed loudly, realizing that Tim's head was hanging upside down in the middle of the room. She was so shocked, in fact, that she managed to not only jump backwards but to knock the couch onto its back at the same time.

In the upside-down world, Axel hung his head and muttered, "Pussy."

Trying not to pass out from sheer fright, Ashley gazed dazedly up at the hole and then around at the stairs. "Okay, uh, where's the projector, Timmy?" she asked. "Nice scare. You really got me good. Now could you come downstairs so I can punch you in the balls?"

Tim shook his head and smiled sheepishly. "No projector. What you see is totally real, and happening live for your viewing pleasure."

Rocky then looked up at the hole, and down at the floor again, and remarked, "Wait a minute, I just realized something. If we're on the ceiling, and that's the floor - that means that portal isn't like a mirror at all!"

"Ugh," groaned Axel. "Save the random cuckoo thoughts for later. We gotta get the hell out of here, dude!"


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Thursday morning, 8:03am. Enzo Lessico got into his car, drove out of the garage, then wrapped around the maze of alleys and driveways connecting the block of townhouses before reaching Carver Boulevard. As he reached the first stoplight, he at last removed the silver purity ring he'd put on that very morning, having just bought it the week before and (entirely for the sales clerk's benefit) claimed it to be a birthday gift for his daughter.

He then made his way onto the freeway, only to get snarled in one of the most epic traffic jams he had ever seen. _And now I remember - this is exactly why I chose not to move to L.A.,_ he cursed himself. Listening to the radio, he quickly found out that virtually every single road in and out of Santa Marina had been hit hard by the fatal freeway collapse during the previous day's earthquake experiment, as almost all of the one million drivers in the city were forced to block up every single alternate route available. A commute that ought to take no more than 45 minutes on a good day instead took twice as long, and then once he got to NemoConTech headquarters he found out, much to his dismay, that the building's underground parking garage (along with most of the multilevel garages sprinkled throughout the downtown area) was closed while teams worked to repair earthquake damage. It took another half an hour just to find a lot with even a single free space.

Fuming and swearing under his breath, Enzo got out of his car, crossed to the other side of the surface parking lot, exited onto the street, crossed the street, and entered the building. The lobby greeter smiled politely to him as he came in. "Mr. Lessico. This is quite a surprise. Since when do you come in through the front door?"

Enzo frowned. "Since the main parking garage is closed."

"Well, that's a shame," said the man. "Because of the quake yesterday, right? Did you have trouble getting in this morning? I heard the freeway was knocked down."

Shaking his head, Enzo lied, "Not the freeway I take. Good thing, too, otherwise I wouldn't be coming in for another hour at least. Traffic jams, no parking, what next?" He slid his ID card through the scanner, then provided a sample of spit for the DNA reader to disable the second lock on the inner door. The greeter nodded as Enzo passed through, and called out, "Enjoy your day, sir," as he silently disappeared into the elevator.

Normally, Enzo would ride only as high as the fifth floor, where his office was located. However, today he had an appointment with Ansem to discuss the plans for the opening of the In-Between. All the rest of the inner circle would be attending the meeting as well, of course. _Provided they all remembered to wear their silver, that is_, Enzo thought to himself as the elevator re-opened on the top floor.

He walked into the office, where as usual he was the last to arrive. Ansem was already seated at the head of the table in the building's finest boardroom - furnished with a skyline view, sleek Scandinavian-style black-wood-and-chrome-metal furniture, and recessed low-glow LED lights for environmental law compliance. Braig and Linda sat on one side of the table, facing the panoramic window and also Vexen and Alexis, who faced them and the blank inner wall behind them. Enzo discreetly took his seat at the foot of the table (which was actually about two inches lower than the head; the thirteen-foot-long table had been built at a very slight angle to achieve this.)

"Six," said Ansem. "At last. I understand you were having trouble finding parking?"

Enzo nodded. "My apologies, Superior."

"No need for that," said Ansem. "Although I feel Five may owe us some after his slight mishap yesterday morning." He looked at Alexis sternly, as if daring him to say, _Yes, I killed people by accident because I left my axe-sword in the dirt too long. Punish me as much as you like._

Ansem then steepled his fingers. "Well, now that we are all here, let's get down to business. I trust you all have your files with you?" Everyone removed their Diamond Steles from their briefcases, and flicked the screens on so they could open the files Ansem was referring to. "Good," he said once everyone, including himself, had the files open on their tablets. "Let's begin."

* * *

This seems like a random place to put it, but: R&R please?


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Tim and Ashley locked eyes, as the latter tried to convince herself that what she was looking at was real. Unable to hide her shock, she broke eye contact first, and sat on the couch, chest heaving as she started hyperventilating.

"No, Ashley, don't-" Tim was about to jump into the right dimension, but stopped himself just in time, as he remembered the gravity worked in exactly the opposite way from the reverse dimension where the rest of his body, from the shoulders down, was still staying. But he couldn't stay hanging on to the edge of the rift forever. He simply didn't have the strength required.

So he looked back at Ashley and asked her, "Hey, could you try and turn the couch onto its back? I need a soft landing surface so none of us can get hurt on impact, you know."

Ashley looked up, still gasping loudly. "Timmy, what the hell is going on?"

"If you do what I say I'll tell you," Tim said. He removed one hand from the rift and lowered it so he could allow his circulation to return to normal. Ashley complied, slowly but surely re-positioning the couch as Tim asked her to do. Once it was on its back, Tim dropped back into the red dimension, then called up, "Okay, I just dropped back in here so I could rest for a second. I'm gonna get back out, don't worry."

Ashley nodded, then stood aside so Tim wouldn't fall on top of her.

Once Tim had recovered his energy, he asked Axel to give him a boost again, and so he did. Tim then used what little upper body strength he had to lift himself up and through the hole, at which point gravity turned on its head in his perception and he found himself falling flat on his back onto the back of the couch. As soon as he stood up, Ashley asked him again to explain himself.

"Hold on a second," said Tim. "Can't exactly leave Axel and Rocky trapped up there."

"Up where?" asked Ashley. "What's in that hole?"

Tim waved his hand in a "just wait" gesture, and then called up to the hole, "Okay, Axel, send Rocky through."

"Why do I have to be the last one out?" Axel griped.

"Because I don't have your jumping ability," Rocky pointed out. "I'm shorter than you, and weaker too, as you love to keep telling me."

Axel sneered at the wall. "Point taken," he said. "Come on then, get outta here." He locked his hands together once more, and Rocky jumped onto them so Axel could push him up and through the hole with enough strength that Rocky soon found himself right where Tim had been mere seconds earlier - on the back of the couch.

Once this was done, Axel went to the back end of the room and took off towards the hole, using his running start to give himself a huge leap up to the edge so he could grasp it. Twisting around so he was holding onto the inner edge of the hole instead, he then pulled himself effortlessly through and back into his proper place, now falling most ungracefully onto his face as he made contact with the couch.

As Axel levered himself back into a standing position and stood the couch back up the proper way, Ashley turned to Tim and asked, "Now can you explain what's happening here?"

"Well, it's a crazy story, actually," said Tim. "It'll be a miracle if you believe us..."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

While Tim and his brothers were scrambling out of the bizarre dimensional rift in their living room, Lucien and Xion were still struggling to find a way out themselves. Unfortunately, they had nobody on the other side to help them out by putting a soft surface on the other side to break their inevitable fall.

Yet.

For the moment, Xion was jumping up to her closet to try and look for something to possibly give herself and her brother a boost up to the hole. Sadly, she being barely over five feet, jumping was difficult for her, especially high jumping, so she couldn't reach the closet door handle to pull it open.

She eventually decided to give up and try searching in Lucien's room for something. It was only across the hall, and all she had in her own room was useless fashion junk and piles of yaoi manga anyway. She leaped over the inverted door, which was now raised off the "floor" like a door on a sub or ship, and opened the closet. Luckily, Lucien's closet had no doorknob, so it could be pushed or pulled open with ease.

But Xion didn't find anything really worth using to reach the hole.

She did find something, though.

She found a second Lucien, sitting on the ceiling so he was now hanging upside down, and apparently asleep, completely oblivious to the fact that the blood was rushing to his head thanks to the force of gravity.

Scared beyond belief, Xion hurriedly crept out of the room and back to the living room, where she saw the original Lucien still attempting to reach the kitchen entrance. "Uh, Lucien," she said apprehensively, "you might want to come take a look at this." She led her brother to his room, and to the bizarre clone hanging in his closet.

"Whoa," Lucien said, almost awed. "This dimension must be even more parallel than I thought."

Xion eyeballed her brother suspiciously. "Dimension?"

"Well, how else would you explain what's been happening today, little sister?" he asked.

"Uh..."

Lucien smiled. "It's a rhetorical question. Just relax. I'm sure that whatever it is, it's probably not gonna follow us home."

"If we get home," Xion pointed out. "_Home_ home, not this freaky place."

Just then, the two Claymores heard a faint voice calling from the living room. "Lucien? Dude, you up there?" It was none other than Axel Nemo, having just emerged from his own house and brought Rocky with him to open the door with his keyblade. _Thank God the Claymores don't have an alarm_, Axel thought. _We'd be in deep shit for sure. _He then tipped the couch onto its back, just as Tim had had Ashley do earlier, and Lucien was able to heave Xion through the hole before jumping through himself.

While Axel and Lucien stepped aside into the kitchen, Xion turned to Rocky and asked, "Wait a minute. How the heck did you get in here without a key?"

"My key," Rocky intoned dramatically, "is universal." He produced his key and sprang it into full size.

Xion could only stare. "I knew I wasn't the only one with a prototype," she said, pulling out a keyblade of her own, this one being black as opposed to white.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

In the boardroom, Ansem's phone buzzed as the security cameras sent him a series of new alerts. His own children, plus Linda and Saix's kids, had worked out an escape from Enzo's parallel dimension trap at last. He smiled, gratified, before turning to his subordinates and announcing the news.

Everybody applauded politely, but not Alexis Terra, for a simple reason. "Is Marley not out?" he asked.

Ansem consulted his screen before responding. "Sorry, Five. Eleven has not found her way out yet. But then, she was always the least likely to make it, what with her being alone in the house and all. Six, help her out, if you please," he commanded Enzo, who closed his eyes, focused on the Terra-Flowers house's own dimensional rift, then started chanting in Latin as he re-shaped the pocket dimension so Marley could have a little staircase leading to the exit.

Over on the other side, Marley breathed a sigh of relief as she realized she now had a way out of the weird world. She stepped up the stairs, crouched on the very top, then leaped through the hole. Unfortunately, with nothing awaiting her to cushion her on impact, she landed with an ungainly thud on the tile floor, and everyone in Ansem's boardroom could hear a loud, sickening crunch of bone as Marley's arm folded underneath herself and broke.

Sickened by the sight, Alexis stood up and made for the door, but Ansem stopped him with a swift blast of his ethereal blade without even getting up himself. "Can't let you do that yet, Five," said Ansem. "If you think about it, what would Eleven think if she realized you knew she'd broken her arm right as it happened? Forget all that bullshit about personal connections and whatever, she'll still be a little bit suspicious. Wait a few moments before you rush to her."

Alexis sighed, defeated. As usual, Ansem was completely right. He looked around at the other board members, who all avoided his gaze - except Vexen, who sent him a brief look of sympathy. _She was always the nicest of the inner circle_, Alexis thought to himself. Within moments, Alexis' phone rang, and he took the call from Marley, while the rest of the inner circle regarded him with silence. _What an amazing actor he is_, Ansem thought, _to fool that flighty bitch into thinking he hasn't already seen what has happened._ All the while, Alexis could only think of one thing: _He can't possibly know. He can't possibly have foreseen this. But he did._

_That goddamn bastard. He must have known this would happen. He's trying to break me.  
_

_Well, it won't work. It can't work.  
_

_For all our sakes.  
_

Ansem then took another look at the security feed from the Claymore house, watching as Rocky and Xion compared each other's keyblades. _Perfect_, he thought to himself. _All according to plan, even though that phrase is a complete and utter cliche._

__Then he turned to Enzo and said, "Six, you may break your...um...spell now." Enzo nodded, then started muttering the Latin chants necessary to close the gap to the pocket dimension. However, he kept one of them open, because Ansem had instructed him to.

His orders had been very specific.


	8. Chapter 8

AN: Prepare for a really crazy real-world reference in this chapter.

Chapter 8

Ashley turned to Tim and held out her cell phone. "Well?" she asked. "I came here to show you a video I thought you'd like. You still wanna see it?"

Tim took the phone and opened its menu. "Is it any good?" he asked.

"Well," Ashley said, "if you're not weirded out enough by...whatever that thing was today, this video might make it worse."

"Okay then," Tim said, opening the video. Ashley had paused it at exactly the right moment to show him a choice cut of the thing. There was a girl (or was it a boy? The person was very much androgynous) with dirty blond hair just like Tim's, even sticking up in exactly the same way. She was wearing a black cloak with odd-looking white things, almost like spiral shells or whistles, attached to the ends of each drawstring. And he/she was prattling on about not being allowed to go to the beach, so they were going to get revenge on somebody who happened to be named...Axel.

Then a little "newspaper article" flashed onto the screen, announcing that this Axel had been arrested for "pedo-leeching" (whatever that was supposed to mean) on a boy named Roxas. There was even a picture of said Axel, and Tim was really thrown by the sight. Axel in the video looked just like the real Axel, right down to the flaming red hair and even the little dots on his cheeks (which, in the real Axel's case, were scars from a skateboarding accident when he was younger.)

"My God," said Tim. "Why do these people look just like me and Axel?"

Ashley giggled. "I got another one, let me find it..." She opened up a second video, then cued it up to a moment where the blond one (whose name was now revealed to be Demyx) was shooing Axel (who now had a British accent) out of the room so he or she could reveal the name of his/her secret crush..."Axel!"

At this point, Tim dropped the phone in shock. "My God," Tim repeated. "What the hell did you just show me?!"

Another giggle from Ashley. "It's called 'Demyx Time,' and it's so funny 'cause they look just like you and your brothers, and one of them's even called Axel, and they're all secretly in love with each other, and-"

"Just how depraved do you think I am?!" cried Axel's voice - he had just re-entered the house, and silently watched the "Demyx Time" videos over Tim's shoulder. "That was freaking disgusting!"

"Damn right," groused Rocky. "People can be really sick, ya know?" He started spitting on the ground and dancing on the spot, like some kind of superstitious way to get rid of evil spirits.

Tim then opened the door and gestured to Ashley to leave. "All right, we will never speak of this again, okay?" His brothers nodded, and Ashley shuffled miserably out the door.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Enzo opened the elevator door in the top-floor bedroom of his house, and traveled down into the underground lab, where all the rest of the inner circle were gathered around the preservation pod in the room's center. Once everyone assumed their positions, Ansem pressed a hidden button in a tiny sweet spot directly below the pod's keypad, and the pod immediately rose up to the ceiling, supported by a network of four angled stilts like some kind of alien land walker.

Ansem then fired his ethereal blades into the small space below, a tiny black pit about four feet across and just as deep. The blades attached to the circumference of the pit, forming a complete circle as they exhausted themselves from his hands. Braig then removed a few locks of his hair, both the black and the white, and teleported them directly into the light stream of the ethereal blades. This was followed by a quick gust of wind from Linda, a single blade of ice from Vexen, a lump of dirt from Alexis, and finally, Enzo's big Latin dictionary being placed in the center, glowing red in the light.

Ansem then handed everyone a cordium rock, just like the ones that had been placed into the machine earlier and vaporized into the townhouses' air vents. "Hold these during the night," he ordered. "They will serve as beacons for your full abilities to latch on to you while you sleep."

Everyone nodded, and Ansem then pressed the hidden button once again to lower the pod back to its proper place. He then turned to Linda and said, "Three days to go. Be prepared."

"I will," she said, stepping aside so Ansem could enter the elevator and return to his bedroom.

AN: I apologize if this episode feels crappy to you, the reader, what with its random, nonsensical plot and all. It was mostly the product of extreme writer's block and a desperation to move the story along as quickly as possible. Luckily, my remaining seven episodes are already much-better formed in my mind than this one ever was. For now, just imagine that, like the lost episode of _Fringe_, that it was just something from another universe...

...or was it? Stay tuned.


End file.
